If a child learns the importance of education through sport, the child will share the message with her/his immediate and extended family, neighbors, community and village and the message will ripple across the country. The joy is immeasurable when you watch a child play sports on a real pitch wearing proper gear for the first time in his life and encouraged to do so by top-class sports figures who are their heroes. This is a life changing experience. Even if only one child makes a success of his sport career while others in his class are educated and skilled as a result of the Programme and go on to become a champion in life, the Programme will have succeeded. We know that the message is spreading.

Raising Standards of the Sport

IIMSAM CAMP MARADONA® would act as a catalyst for a positive change to promote, empower, and develop football across the world especially in countries where the development of the sport suffers from poor levels of infrastructure and participation.
In order to achieve this aim, the Programme will assist in the development of all year round maintenance artificial playing turfs, through which young people will be able to improve their skills. Effective partnerships with various stakeholders will help bring about rapid development.

An Educational Legacy

Sport is an ideal schooling for life. The skills and discipline learned through playing football, indeed through all physical education, are fundamental to the holistic development of young people. Well-rounded education teaches co-operation and builds confidence, strengths which are carried throughout adult life that help to create and sustain social cohesion. Physical education is an essential element of lifelong learning. Conversely, the neglect of physical education reduces the quality of that education and has negative future impacts on public health and national health budgets. Physical education is the only subject in the curriculum that focuses specifically on the body. In doing so, it helps teach young people self-respect and helps them respond to many challenges with which they are confronted in the world, including poverty, the threat of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, and the dangers of tobacco and drugs.

Providing students with the opportunity to play ensures that they receive a well-rounded education that addresses body, mind, and spirit. Sports actively educate young people about the importance of certain key values such as honesty, fair play, and respect for others. It also emphasizes the importance of rules and provides young people with the means to learn not only how to be good losers, but to be good winners.

Bridging Divides

The IIMSAM CAMP MARADONA® aims to bring greater understanding and peace across communities and to encourage social integration on both a local and a global level. The potential exists to make powerful links between football and peace. From international levels to grassroots, a common enthusiasm for sports can bring people together in a way that breaks down prejudices between them. Football can be an ideal forum for resuming social dialogue in troubled communities, thus highlighting the similarities, rather than the differences, between people.

It is a primary objective of IIMSAM CAMP MARADONA® to draw attention to this transforming power in sports. Sports can teach honesty, communication, and empathy and is able to show that competition and co-operation can happily co-exist. For young people in unstable environments (such as refugees, displaced persons, orphans, and former child soldiers), football offers a sense of normality and structure and serves as a means for young people to channel their energies positively.